Increasing numbers of Maine consumers are contacting COMBAT saying they have been cheated by or are intended victims of bogus Internet domain registration, Web site creation offers, chain letters, Internet moneymaking schemes, identity theft, and an abundance of other schemes.

Since COMBAT receives no government funding and relies on community volunteers helping their neighbors, the influx of Internet-related complaints is stretching our mailboxes. You can help greatly by protecting yourself.

Scam artists target would-be Web site owners by offering an opportunity to preregister top-level domain names. Domain names are the unique terms that enable Internet users to locate a specific Web site. The top-level domain is the final extension, such as “.com” or “.org.”

These solicitations come by fax or e-mail, offering a chance at domain names, for a fee, as soon as they become available. Some registration services guarantee new domain names or promise preferential treatment in the registration process. To protect yourself, ignore domain name preregistration services that guarantee particular top-level domain names or preferential treatment in the assignment of domain names. Better yet, ignore ALL unsolicited faxes or e-mails that refer to domain registration. Do business with a LOCAL Internet services provider – period.

Also, ignore e-mail offers to earn easy money in a short period of time.

They’re intriguing. They’re inviting. They’re phoney. They’re also illegal.

Seven defendants caught in a Federal Trade Commission sting operation agreed to settle charges that they were spamming consumers with deceptive chain letters. The letters promised “$46,000 or more in the next 90 days” or similar extravagant amounts to recipients who were to send $5 in cash to each of four or five participants at the top of the list. The letters instructed new recruits to place their own name and address at the top of the list and remove the name on the bottom. In return for the $5 payment, recruits received “reports” providing instructions about how to start their own chain letter schemes and recruit tens of thousands of others via spam.

The FTC sent letters to 1,000 spammers, warning them that their chain-letter scheme was illegal and instructing them to stop promoting their chain letters, to return any money they had received by participating in the program, and to forward a copy of the FTC’s warning letter to everyone they had spammed.

The FTC searched online newsgroups and the agency’s junk e-mail database looking for the chain-letter scam and found more than 2,000 participants in the chain letter from almost 60 countries around the world. Using undercover post office boxes and e-mail accounts, FTC investigators sent the requisite $5 fee to individuals who had previously been warned, but who appeared to be continuing in the scheme. Those who responded by sending the undercover FTC employees the “report” demonstrated that despite the FTC warning letter, they continued to participate in the illegal chain-letter spam.

The judgments barred the defendants from promoting, marketing, advertising, offering for sale, selling, or assisting others in any Ponzi scheme, chain-marketing scheme, or other schemes and misrepresentations about the potential earnings, income, benefits, amount of sales, incentives, profits, or rewards derived from any marketing scheme.

The FTC receives spam complaints at a rate of approximately 25,000 e-mail messages a day. There have been more than 8 million such complaints since 1998. The Internet fraud problem is out of control, and growing every day.

COMBAT is raising funds to finance what will be a very costly effort: giving Maine households and merchants a unique opportunity to fight fraud and deception on an Internet site dedicated exclusively to protecting Maine people. Watch this space for the announcement when COMBAT’s Web site, www.consumerprotect.org, is fully activated.

Consumer Forum is a collaboration of the Bangor Daily News and Northeast COMBAT (Consumers Of Maine Bringing Action Together), Maine’s membership-funded nonprofit consumer organization. Individual membership $25, business rates start at $125 (0-10 employees). For help and information write: Consumer Forum, Bangor Daily News, PO Box 1329, Bangor 04402-1329.